An intense six-week intensive course
Who knew this 6-week intensive course would actually be so intense? The lectures from earlier weeks and networking events with Munk alumni both culminated into a rewarding and invaluable assignment working with United Way Greater Toronto. This assignment definitely had its challenges. Our groups were divided but the class was technically producing one long report, making it difficult sometimes to delineate which group was diving into which detail, without stepping on each others’ toes. The preliminary presentations helped solve a lot of this confusion and the feedback from our peers heavily shaped our presentation for United Way. As part of the governance context team, my biggest takeaway from this project was the role of each stakeholder and the amount of influence each player had. The presence of power imbalances sometimes had positive outcomes, because of the strong leadership roles that players held. But other times these power imbalances led to unintended outcomes such as resident displacement.
My overall takeaways from this course include a major appreciation for local governments and the services they provide for the public. I worked with the federal government in my summer internship and always thought I would pursue my career in the federal government. But this course sparked a curiosity in a municipal career. When alumni spoke about their reasons for choosing local government, it was often centred around being able to see your work actually play out. From my internship, I definitely felt removed from actual Canadians. I wasn’t able to connect my work to government services that people experienced everyday and see the impact my work had on the public. But I didn’t reflect on this because I was just grateful to receive my first government position and get my foot in the door. Now that my foot is in the door, I feel I will do more exploring and see what other lines of work there are, where I can feel more rewarded and meaningful with my work. A career in the federal government would mean potentially relocating to Ottawa, and how could I ever leave this vibrant city of Toronto? Especially when it’s home to all my favourite restaurants?
To conclude, Urban Policy with Professor Eidelman was a highlight of my MPP degree at Munk and I hope I will be invited back to speak as an alum to share my lessons learned just as past cohorts have graciously shared with me.
